Wanting to read this for a while, and in the wake of the Harvey sex scandal now is the perfect time. Man, and I thought he was a vile human being before! A fascinating insider account of many many movies I love. I learned more about movie making than I ever had before and appreciated the personal interviews of a number of my favorite actors and directors. Miramar is now bankrupt. To that I can say, Good.

Biskind continues what he started with Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, this time tackling Hollywood in the 1990s and the rise (and fall) of independent film, in particular the fortunes of Miramax and the seemingly omnipotent Weinsteins. It's fantastically pulpy and trashy, and the gossip and rumours flow thick and fast. In other words, it's great.

funny stories, rather breathlessly told - it would have been better to have a little more overview. but this is the story of how Miramax changed American cinema, and its pretty entertaining.

Biskind researched the crap out of this book and the portrait of Miramax is even more terrifying than you can believe. I kept wishing they'd come out with one more flop at the right time to finally doom them but the book also convinced me that every other straight white male in the film business also admired their relentless misogyny, homophobia and starfucking. I loved the presence of Spike Lee in this book, constantly goading Miramax and all of the film studios, calling the Ws "Satan" and that "fat rat fucker," as well as Christine Vachon and Todd Haynes managing to make "Far from Heaven" by telling W. to fuck off. But the overall portrait is of independent film as the same old shit, nothing but a con to get directors and actors desperate for exposure to sign over all of the money in their movies to Miramax or Sundance (Robert Redford is as bad as the brothers) and getting nothing if they break or flop.
I held back a star because this book could have held back 15-20 superfluous W. anecdotes. You know by the 10th one that he will scream at people, hit them, throw stuff, and act as a sexual predator and will get away with it for decades and decades because the movie business is completely rotten. I would have loved more interviews with Spike, with Todd Haynes, with Christine Vachon, with Kimberly Peirce, with Jane Campion, or Cheryl Dunye. Soderbergh and David O Russell are also overexposed and are not nearly as talented as they think they are.

Another book I'm giving up on. About 150 pages in I'm realizing that if Biskind had curbed the "Harvey Weinstein is a big fat bully" and/or "Robert Redford is a wishy washy prima donna" gossip mongering the whole book would be about 1/3 as long. Too bad. The rest was pretty interesting, but I don't have patience for that much repetition.

Doesn’t really have much arc as a story, just kind of gossips for 500 pages and just ends. And at times that works very well. But overall it doesn’t do justice to any character who isn’t Weinstein or a star because of this format. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is certainly a better piece (somewhat related to a more interesting era but mostly due to some semblance of arc and storyline).

De entrada hay que partir de la base de que no es un libro sobre cine independiente, es un libro sobre Miramax y los hermanos Weinstein con otros personajes secundarios (Sundance, October Films) que van apareciendo de forma más o menos esporádica.

Tiene el mismo defecto que se le puede achacar al libro de Toros salvajes del mismo autor de centrarse en unos personajes concretos según le conviene para darle más forma de relato dejando de lado a otros igual de importantes, aunque aquí se nota de forma mucho más acusada (un libro de cine independiente que solo menciona a Jim Jarmusch y los Coen de pasada no es serio). Además, a veces se nota que selecciona algunos hechos de forma interesada de acuerdo con lo que quiera transmitir o quedándose con las versiones que mejor le vienen de ciertos incidentes.

A cambio es muy entretenido pese a su larga extensión (aunque a veces cansa un poco cuando detalla los tejemanejes más burocráticos o legales, pero sigue siendo información objetivamente relevante) y me ha servido para refrescar autores y películas que tenía olvidadas así como para rescatar otras que no conocía, que es lo más importante.

Obviously pretty fascinating to read this in the wake of the cultural accounting that's drummed the Weinsteins out of the industry (even as the behavior they exhibited remains somewhat prevalent and likely always will), but the craziest thing here is that the audiobook narrator gives Steven Soderbergh a shockingly thick Southern accent for some reason.

This is also a pretty compelling chronicle of the films that never quite made the leap from this era's indie scene to the home video market. Something like "The Hairy Bird," for example, which was retitled as "Strike" (which I'd still never heard of), and initially released to theaters as "All I Wanna Do" (which I definitely *have* heard of).

Anyway, I could go on about everything here at greater length, but the best thing to do is to probably think of it the way I thought of "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls." A "Hollywood Babylon"-esque accounting of an era in Hollywood that prints the most salacious alleged behavior as gospel.